A Year's Journey through France and Part of Spain, 1777 eBook

LETTER XII.

MONTPELLIER.

Never was a traveller more disappointed than I was
upon entering into this renowned city; a city, the
name of which my ears have been familiar to, ever
since I first heard of disease or medicine. I
expected to find it filled with palaces; and to perceive
the superiority of the soft air it is so celebrated
for, above all other places; instead of which, I was
accompanied for many miles before I entered it with
thousands of Moschettos, which, in spite of all the
hostilities we committed upon them, made our faces,
hands and legs, as bad in appearance as persons just
recovering from a plentiful crop of the small-pox,
and infinitely more miserable. Bad as these flies
are in the West-Indies, I suffered more in a few days
from them at, and near Montpellier, than I did for
some years in Jamaica.

However fine and salubrious the air of this town might
have been formerly, it is far otherwise now; and it
may be naturally accounted for; the sea has retired
from the coast, and has left three leagues of marshy
ground between it and the town, where the hot sun,
and stagnated waters, breed not only flies, but distempers
also; beside this, there is, and ever was, something
very peculiar in the air of the town itself:
it is the only town in France where verdigris is made
in any great quantity; and this, I am inclined to
think, is not a very favourable circumstance; where
the air is so disposed to cankerise, and corrode copper,
it cannot be so pure, as where none can be produced;
but here, every cave and wine-cellar is filled with
sheets of copper, from which such quantities of verdigris
are daily collected, that it is one of the principal
branches of their trade. The streets are very
narrow, and very dirty; and though there are many
good houses, a fine theatre, and a great number of
public edifices beside churches, it makes altogether
but an indifferent figure.

Without the walls of the town, indeed, there stands
a noble equestrian statue of Louis the XIVth, surrounded
with spacious walks, and adorned with a beautiful
fountain. Their walks command a view of the Mediterranean
Sea in front, and the Alps and Pyrenees on the right
and left. The water too is conducted to a most
beautiful Temple d’ Eau over a triple
range of arches, in the manner of the Pont du Gard,
from a very considerable distance. The modern
arches over which it runs, are indeed, a great and
mighty piece of work; for they are so very large,
extended so far, and are so numerous, that I could
find no person to inform me of their exact number;
however, I speak within the bounds of truth, I hope,
when I say there are many hundred; and that it is a
work which the Romans might have been proud of, and
must therefore convey an high idea of the riches and
mightiness of a kingdom, wherein one province alone
could bear, and be willing too to bear, so great an
expence, and raise so useful, as well as beautiful
a monument; for beside the immense expence of this
triple range of arches, the source from whence the
water is conveyed is, I think, three leagues distant
from the town, by which means every quarter of it is
plentifully supplied with fountains which always run,
and which in hot climates are equally pleasing, refreshing,
and useful.